The Fundamentalist Xtians should not be allowed to hijack the language of Christianity. They are at least as much heretics to Christianity as the Arians and Gnostics of early Christian days.

Biblical inerrancy is not possible.

The books both above and below show the limitations of language and the impossibility of Biblical Inerrancy.

How can language be misused? Using General Semantics, this book was Written to explain Nazi propaganda and still used as a textbook

Books - Popular Math, Post Enlightenment & Science

This book explains why the above books on Christian Fundamentalism are politically important in America today.

Modern Society measures risk & predicts possible futures. The book below is a higly readable history of insurance, statistics and modern financial instruments.

Compare this to religion, in which it is presumed that the perfect society was known in the past and all that is necessary to do is to return to that perfect society.

Fascinating, highly readable and fun book on modern mathematics and its limitations. If you are interested in ideas, this is your book!

This is a collection of Hofstader's Scientific American articles. Again, a very fascinationg and highly readable book, requiring no mathematical background. (Buy it used - it is one of the books that will keep disappearing.)

Older, very fascinating book on mathematical ideas. Did you know there are three kinds of infinity?

Randy "Duke" Cunningham is the poster child for corruption among the Republicans in Congress. He pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from various individuals in exchange for Cunningham's help getting favors from government as well as failure to report income on his taxes.

One of the bribers was Mitchell Wade, owner of the defense contracting firm MZM, and Brent Wilkes, owner of ADCS Inc., another defense contractor. Both got significant government contracts because Cunningham was on the Defense Appropriations Committee of Congress.

Two other bribers of "Duke" were Thomas Kontogiannis, an real estate magnate in New York who had been convicted of bid-rigging and bribing members of a New York school board in order to obtain a contract. Kontogiannis wanted Randy Cunningham to get President Bush to sign a pardon for him. The fourth person was Kontogiannis's nephew John T. Michael who owned a mortgage company which gave Congressman Cunningham two large mortgages which he used to buy his Rancho Santa Fe mansion. It appears that Thomas Kontogiannis was the key person here, and he roped in his nephew to do the money-handling for him.

At least that is what it looked like up until now. Josh Marshall at TPM appears to have found indicators that Kontogiannis may have had a larger role in the overall operations. Remember, Cunningham retired from that Navy as a Commander and the top Navy flying ace from Viet Nam. Both Wade and Wilkes were in Naval Intelligence before they became Defense Contractors.

Now, from the records, one of things that Kontogiannis wanted from Duke was some help trying to beat the rap (and later get a pardon for) a bid-rigging scandal back in New York. And for a long time I'd always sort of figured that Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade were the real players in this story, with Kontogiannis just added in for comic relief and -- as someone who controlled a mortgage company -- someone who could easily move money around.

But I'm hearing it may not be that simple.

Consider this. Mitch Wade was in naval intelligence before he left to work in the fraud and public corruption sector. Brent Wilkes -- and we're going to be hearing a lot more about this -- was deep into the darker regions of the intel world. Both of their scams were the same, plying the government contracting biz deep in the classified realm where scrutiny and oversight is minimal at best.

Is Kontogiannis also in the Intelligence business such that his connection to Cunningham is also hidden behind a wall of national security secrecy?

Josh Marshall also points out that Kontogiannis was previously (1992) arrested Kontogiannis along with an employee at the US Embassy in Athens for accepting bribes to provide phony US visas. The same post provides additional details regarding what Kontogiiannis was convicted for with the New York School Board.

Josh is looking into what Kontogiannis was involved in, and the answer may be quite interesting.